A senior United Nations prosecutor investigating Indonesian war crimes
in East Timor will compile a report on atrocities committed after the
bloody 1975 invasion in which up to 200,000 Timorese were killed.

Mr Mohamed Ottman, the UN Chief Prosecutor in East Timor, a Tanzanian
lawyer and former chief prosecutor at the Rwandan International Criminal
Tribunal will lead the team examining whether there was a systematic
campaign of violence.

The former Australian consul in Dili and expert on East Timor, Mr James
Dunn, will help compile the report, which will be essential in proving
crimes against humanity stemming from political violence leading up to and
after last year's referendum.

"In order to prove crimes against humanity, you need to to prove a
pattern of systematic and widespread attacks against a civilian
population," said the UN's human rights chief in Dili, Mr Patrick
Burgess.

He said that under international law, militia killings such as the Suai
cathedral massacre on September 6 last year in which up to 200 people
died, did not alone prove a case for crimes against humanity, but a
criminal case of mass murder.

A systematic pattern of violence directed against East Timorese
civilians by Indonesian troops stemming back to 1975 would help prove the
more serious charge of war crimes or crimes against humanity.

It is understood that once a case is established for crimes against
humanity, international warrants are likely to be issued against a number
of senior Indonesian military commanders.

This process is expected to be completed before East Timor gains full
independence next year, but the biggest challenge facing UN prosecutors
will be to bring the alleged perpetrators from Indonesia to East Timor.

Earlier this year, the United Nations Transitional Administration in
East Timor established a Serious Crimes Unit to hear six categories of
crimes including war crimes, crimes against humanity, torture, rape and
murder.

Mr Ottman who arrived in East Timor earlier this month.

Mr Dunn said crimes committed by Indonesian forces in East Timor from
1975 to 1998 ranked alongside the worst excesses of Nazi Germany.

They included a series of massacres at Dili wharf in December 1975 in
which several hundred East Timorese men and women were shot and their
bodies dumped into the sea. The victims included Australian journalist
Roger East and the wife of former Fretilin leader Nicolai Lobato.

Soldiers from airborne Battalion 502, the same battalion now deployed
opposite Australian peacekeepers at Balibo, were allegedly responsible.

Other mass killings to be investigated include the slaughter of
Liquica's ethnic Chinese community and the murder of up to 1,200 people in
Bobonaro in 1976.

Mr Dunn said he was aware of hundreds of individual cases of rape and
torture committed by Indonesian soldiers, including eyewitnesses to a case
in which a 15-year-old girl was raped and then thrown into a crocodile pit
in Dili.

Other atrocities included the infamous 1991 Dili Massacre at Santa Cruz
cemetery in which Indonesian troops opened fire on unarmed protesters
killing as many as 271 people.

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